Politics

Despite announcing her plan six weeks earlier to resign instead of serving another term, state Rep. Dawnna Dukes handily won re-election earlier this month. Dukes, an Austin Democrat, abruptly announced her plan to retire in late September, citing health issues related to a 2013 car accident and concerns over caring for her 9-year-old daughter. Her announcement came amid an ongoing investigation by the Travis County District Attorney’s office into Duke's alleged misuse of staff and government...

From Texas Standard: It's the first day for Texas lawmakers to file bills for the upcoming session at the Statehouse. Competing for the attention and votes of state lawmakers are issues of education funding and safety for the most vulnerable Texans – foster kids. Lauren McGaughy, who'll be covering the 85th Legislature for the Dallas Morning News, says bill filers often "front-load" so a lot of bills are filed on the first day.

From Texas Standard: Something about the events of the past few days suggests there's a word we'll be hearing a whole lot more in coming months, if not years: nationalism. Jeremi Suri , a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, says the period between World War II and September 11 was a period of globalism.

From Texas Standard: If you're a news junkie, it might seem like the presidential election was the only thing worth covering for the past 18 months. But plenty of stories went under- or unreported. What stories have flown under the radar while the nation recoiled at this year's campaign outrages and sat riveted to the horse race? David Uberti , staff writer at the Columbia Journalism Review, says the way news is distributed puts much of the coverage power in the hands of the news consumer.

From Texas Standard: We're just one day away from putting the 2016 election in the record books – so we thought we'd take a few minutes to highlight the top five Texas moments that shaped the election. Kevin Diaz , Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle, says many of these top five Texas-related moments involve the state's junior senator and one-time presidential candidate, Ted Cruz.

From Texas Standard: With compounding reports of Donald Trump’s alleged sexual abuse of women, it’s easy to forget his earlier outrageous claims. Case in point – the border wall. The San Antonio Express-News spent the last month exploring just how real a border wall could be and reporter Jason Buch , who worked on the project, says wall rhetoric doesn’t often match reality.

From Texas Standard: Dark money. Sounds evil, doesn't it? For the past several years, the Texas Ethics Commission has been mired in an investigation of a group called Empower Texans , a right-leaning organization that pushes a limited government agenda and supports candidates who share its values but does not disclose its donors. As the clock has ticked on a high-profile complaint against the group, concerns have grown over whether the Ethics Commission has what it takes to do its job of policing campaign money.

From Texas Standard: He was a businessman who liked to brag about his financial success, cracked rape jokes around reporters and kissed "just about every woman within arms' reach." She was a Democrat who shattered many ceilings, with real-world political experience and demanded that her opponent disclose his taxes. These two also wouldn't shake hands.

From Texas Standard: It used to be that people concerned about the state of political coverage in America worried about the constant obsession with who's ahead. This year, both sides are fixated with landing the nastiest punch, one blow that will decisively take out the other. It almost happened in 1988, during the Vice Presidential debate when Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, a Democrat, quipped to his Republican rival, Sen. Dan Quayle of Virginia: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

From Texas Standard: Numbers show a much tighter presidential race than anyone might imagine in what's often considered to be the reddest of red states. The Texas Lyceum released its closely watched polling results yesterday, showing that the race to the White House is still neck-and-neck.

Over the weekend, Texas Democrats met in San Antonio ahead of this year’s presidential election. A question on almost everyone’s lips was whether this year’s election has set the groundwork for Democratic gains in the state.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. concludes his conversation with Erin Aubry Kaplan, journalist, columnist, educator and author of ‘I Heart Obama.’ In his nearly two terms as president, Barack Obama has solidified his status as something African Americans haven’t had for fifty years: a folk hero. The 1960s delivered Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, forever twinned as larger-than-life outsiders and truth tellers who took on racism and died in the process....

From Texas Standard : One phrase often heard this year: There's never been a political year like 2016. But that’s not exactly true. Lauren Fox writes for Talking Points Memo, and she says we shouldn't forget about the Texas gubernatorial race of 1990. Twenty-six years ago Republican Clayton Williams and Democrat Ann Richards were up against each other for one of the highest seats in Texas politics. The race was dubbed “Claytie and the Lady.” Fox is among the first to explore the...

From Texas Standard: President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union Address this week – and yet still there are those in this country who would argue he was never eligible to be president. These so-called " birther " arguments are now haunting GOP Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz , who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. Cruz says it's a non-issue, but one particularly outspoken opponent disagrees.

From Texas Standard: The Texas Constitution says there's no religious test for office holders – provided that "he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme being." So much for prohibitions on religious tests – not to mention female candidates. The "supreme being" clause went unchallenged for years, until three decades ago. It was then Texas' Attorney General agreed there's no way to enforce any real or imagined constitutional ban on atheist office-holders.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. presents an encore presentation of a conversation he had with the late Shirley A. Chisholm. Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to Congress and an outspoken advocate for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives . She was known as a politician who refused to allow fellow politicians, including the male-dominated Congressional Black Caucus, to sway her from her goals....

From Texas Standard: In times like these, the arc of history is often invoked to make sense of the present. So the narrative goes, the so-called Islamic State arose in the vacuum left after America’s misadventures post-9/11. Recently, Jon Meacham’s book has been in the news for revelations that George Herbert Walker Bush – Bush 41 – thought his son, W. – Bush 43 – was badly served by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. That’s news, especially since the narrative used to be that 43 was just doing his father’s bidding, retribution for an unfinished war.

From Texas Standard: This week in Texas politics: in between court appearances, A.G. Paxton visits a church in central Texas and Sen. Cruz rounds up endorsements while Wendy Davis makes an endorsement of her own.

From Texas Standard : Former Texas Governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry recently confronted Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, calling it an act of "Trump-ism," which he defined as “a toxic mix of demagoguery and nonsense.” Michael Signer wrote a book on demagoguery, “Demagogue: The Fight to Save Democracy From its Worst Enemies.” He’s also commented on various news sites about the topic. Signer shared his thoughts on demagoguery and its relation to the current political race for the presidency with the Texas Standard.